Push the button, Frank
by guardian of olympus
Summary: After TV's Frank's death and subsequent ascension to Second Banana Heaven, Doctor Clayton Forrester mourns and thinks back to the only friend he ever had... NO SLASH. Just friendship.


As the sun began to set over planet Earth's western side, the bowls of Deep 13 still whirred away in the darkness. Past the blinking, beeping computers typing away into nothingness and piles of useless, old and broken inventions, a man sat, wearing a crumpled green coat, his mop of hair even more of a mess than normal, staring at the wall with an air of someone lost.

Doctor Clayton Forrester had not had a happy childhood. His mother was always disapproving, always looking down on him, only when she took notice of him of course, which wasn't often.

He had spent the majority of his childhood trying to please his mother, at first making her things out of cardboard and milk bottles like ordinary six year olds, then when that hadn't worked he moved on to more advanced methods, making her a lamp, then a mood changing dress, and finally a robot housemaid to do the housework, but these had been ignored and thrown away, unused or broken under his mothers six inch high heels. But Clayton kept trying. He didn't understand why his mother hated him so much. Maybe it was because father wasn't there. He had taken off at the first sign of his son, seemingly not deeming him worth his time.

This was not the only time Doctor Clayton Deborah Susan Forrester had experienced abandonment.

At school he had hoped to make friends, hoping someone would understand him and fill this hole in his soul, to satisfy his deep yearning to feel wanted left by his mother, but apparently the other children had missed the memo.

The first day had gotten off to a bad start, wearing clothes two sizes to big as his mother didnt buy him any proper clothes of his own and then sitting on his own in the corner of the classroom, and from then it only grew progressively worse through the remaining years.

He found himself repeatedly picked on, spat at and beaten up over his ten years if schooling. He was called a freak due to his eagerness to learn, often getting top of the class despite the punishment he knew he would receive at break.

One day, the school bullies had cornered him doing an experiment on the roof during a storm, testing the electric current in a bolt of lightening. They had beaten him up and forced him to hold onto the metal of his experiment. The lightning had hit its mark and sent a few thousand volts through the child. He had managed to jump just in time to avoid receiving a fatal dose, but he had had to be hospitalised and had been left with a permanent white stripe down his hair. A permanent mark, a permanent reminder that he was a freak. That he would never belong.

He was glad when he was able to leave for college, having retreated almost entirely into his shell. He entered science competitions, never coming very far due to his fear of ridicule, afraid his intellect would cause another decade of suffering.

The sports jocks were jerks to him, of course. The small, unimposing scientist no match for their toned physique. Once more, he found himself time and again nursing a black eye or a bloody nose, but it wasn't as bad as before, at least.

After leaving college, he had gained enough courage and determination once more, setting up a personal lab in the place he called Deep 13, in an abandoned mine shaft a few thousand feet down into the Earth, left from an old government testing of mining equipment. Here he could be safe. Here he could hide away and work, unjudged and unridiculed for his work. He could be free.

It was not long after he had chosen the path of Mad Science that he had met TV'sFrank.

His previous co-worker, Lawrence, hadn't lasted long; the years of isolation in childhood and school had deprived Doctor Forrester of any practice of human interaction, causing him to appear at first anti-social, and then as he grew in confidence about his abilities in science, had started to become oppressive to his second in command, letting free the need to feel important that had been pent up over the years. After Lawrence had left, TV Frank took his place, and despite Forrester's rather... Violent tendencies to kill, maim or otherwise injure Frank during his experiments, the two had formed an unlikely friendship.

Now he was gone.

Frank was gone and Clayton Forrester had no one left.

Joel, Mike and the bots were OK, in fact in recent years they had come to... Abide each other, sometimes sharing a polite word during their time out of the theatre; though often Crow and Tom Servo would insult him, jibe him and threaten him, but he was used to it. It was nothing he hadn't already experienced after all.

He would never let them see him cry. No.

To them, Clayton Forrester was a heartless, cold scientist who cared for no one but his experiments.

Lonely? Him? Ha!

They would never see the effects the jibes had on him. He knew he was a coward and a weasel. It was what everyone had ever called him so why should he believe anything different?

TV Frank had been his only friend in the world, and even he had deserted him, leaving him alone in a cruel and cold world, it's back turned to him.

Doctor Forrester continued on in Deep 13. Occasionally Mike would hit the button to fast and catch him wiping his eyes, but Forrester passed it off as dust, an allergy or a sad movie, which they found very amusing up on the Satellite of Love.

Doctor Forrester, having feelings?! Don't make them laugh!

No. He'd never let them see. He'd remain in Deep 13, as he always had been.

Alone.

"Push the button, Frank."


End file.
